Monday, February 23, 2015

First announced several years ago at
E3, The Order 1886 has finally been released on the PS4. Without
question, The Order 1886 is a beautiful looking game. In addition to
its superb graphics, The Order 1886 has a great concept for both a
story and world. Unfortunately, the experience is marred by a poorly
executed story and lackluster game play.

You play as Galahad, a knight that is
part of an Order that can trace its origins back to the days of King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The mission of this Order
is apparently to protect England from domestic threats, with said
threats being lycans (AKA Werewolves) and ordinary human rebels. The
story is there but it is not told properly and there are too many
missing details. The player is thrown into what appears to be a war
that has been going on for ages, but you are never told much about
it. Even the origin of the lycans and why the Order is fighting them
is never explained. The Order 1886 also completely misses the point
of collectible items. They are supposed to help fill in gaps of the
story or add small details that would be missed otherwise. Yet most
of the collectibles have little to do with the story and are just
there for the sake of giving the player something to do in the
environment other than go from point A to point B.

It has been said many times, but The
Order 1886 is a short game. It doesn't take all that long to beat
even if you do stop and examine some items from time to time. But
even at the end it doesn't feel like the story got resolved at all,
it just ends. In general the pacing of the game is a mess and sudden
plot points are brought forth with little to no explanation.

He sure does look familiar...

Gameplay in the Order 1886 consists of
mostly walking around the environment, occasionally shooting some
people or (rarely) lycans that get in your way. The rest of the time
is spent watching cut scenes and responding to quick time events
(QTE). While the quick time events are well designed and are not
cheap shot unavoidable first time through deaths (like in Uncharted
or that unholy abomination Clive Barker's Jericho), there are simply
too many of them. Press Triangle to confirm you've looked at an
object. Press Square to do some random action. Press X a bunch of
times because Simon says. Because of the never ending onslaught of
QTEs, walking away from the console while a cut scene is playing is
inadvisable.

The Order 1886 provides the player with
a lot of guns, but there are only a handful of times throughout the
entire game where you get to use them. At this point gameplay
devolves to generic third person cover based shooting where you just
wait and pop enemies in the head when they start shooting. Fighting
a lycan is different and much more interesting than fighting a bunch
of humans, but unfortunately lycans are surprisingly rare even though
they had been a big selling point in all the promotional stuff for
this game.

Beautiful London Skybox

As I mentioned earlier, The Order 1886
looks and sounds great. Although there isn't much you can interact
with in the environments, they are highly detailed and everything
feels life like from the streets of London to how the characters move
around and interact with one another. The graphics and lighting
lead to The Order looking and feeling like the rich cinematic
experience that Ready at Dawn had hoped to deliver. This is also
complemented by a great soundtrack courtesy of Jason Graves, whom is
known for composing the soundtracks for other games like the Dead
Space series.

Overall, I'd say The Order 1886 is a
decent game. It isn't bad, but it isn't good either. There is a lot
of potential for the start of a great series. So if Ready at Dawn
decides to make a sequel, I hope that they have learned from their
mistakes. In the mean time, The Order 1886 provides an okay
exclusive experience for the PS4. If you choose to buy it, make
sure to not have unrealistic expectations for this game because it
will disappoint you.

RBFB RATING:

DG – Decent Game (Approx. 75 in standard rating score)

Note: I've decided to switch to my own
rating system rather than using numbers or grades. It is all
arbitrary anyway given that reviews are nothing more than a (usually)
well written out opinion of a game.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Readers of Rated B For Blog will be
well aware of the SWTOR project I did near the end of last year. I
had planned on having this conclusion article posted sometime in
December, but then I got busy with some other projects. So without
further delay, here is the conclusion to my return to SWTOR.

The return to SWTOR was both
interesting and nostalgic. It had been so long since I had last
played the game that there was a bit of a relearning curve. From
getting the UI customized to relearning the basics of combat and
where everything is located. However, once I was over that curve,
things started to fall right into place almost like I had never left
the game. Of course, this process will apply to any MMO if you try
to pick up where you left off awhile ago.

While SWTOR is pretty similar to most
hot key MMORPGS like World of Warcraft and Rift, it differs in one
particular way aside from being based on a popular movie series.
Unlike WoW, SWTOR gameplay tends to be significantly more
unforgiving. Fighting two enemies while leveling can be potentially
tough, and trying to fight three or more becomes a very difficult
task. This could be that SWTOR is tuned to be a more difficult game.

One thing I've learned is that while
SWTOR can be fun, the universe and game play aren't enough to keep me
interested to keep playing. That unfortunately hasn't changed since
I stopped playing the game back in early 2012. Yet somehow SWTOR
continues to maintain a player base, so clearly there is a niche
market for this kind of game. I suppose that might have something to
do with the fact that Star Wars Galaxies closed its doors sometime
ago and those players had nowhere to go to scratch that Star Wars
video game itch. I'd be interested in seeing how much money Bioware
and EA earn from the Cartel Market, but I imagine they keep those
numbers classified for business reasons. Regardless of profits,
there appear to be quite a few players on planets and at the space
station head quarters for the Empire and the Republic.

Needless to say, I don't regret giving
SWTOR a second try. It was a change of pace from my usual choice of
games. Not only that, but it was fun to keep a journal about my
activities in the game as I progressed. I've decided that I will do
the same thing with No Man's Sky when that comes out. It sounds like
it will be quite a journey to go from the edge of that galaxy all the
way to the center.